"Below comments are from asm expert in the field.... Many of you may have already seen this British study (attached) that came out yesterday. It has one of the clearest discussions of the paths available to us and their consequences that I have seen. The baseline assumptions (educated guesses based on data from China, other countries, and other similar infections) in their model are also interesting, such as: - 1/3 of transmissions in workplace/schools, 1/3 in community, and 1/3 in household - infectiousness assumed to occur 12 hours before onset of symptoms in symptomatic individual - symptomatic individuals assumed to be 50% more infectious than asymptomatic individuals - 2/3 of infected individuals are sufficiently symptomatic to self-identify and self-isolate - 30% of those hospitalized require intubation/ECMO, 50% of these die - Average hospital stay of 10 days (non-intubated), 16 days (intubated) (10 days in ICU) But the point of the article is that out of the two main choices of mitigation (flattening the peak) or the more severe suppression (Chinese approach, reducing the reproductive rate to - 1), only suppression can prevent a tidal wave of ill patients who cannot be treated due to lack of capacity. Even the best mitigation strategies, although reducing total deaths by 50% compared to an unchecked epidemic, would result in at least 8x more ICU patients than we have surge capacity to accommodate. However, suppression is also no panacea, as once measures are lifted, transmission will rapidly rebound, potentially producing an epidemic comparable in scale to what would have been seen had no interventions been adopted."